We liked Art Replogle. We like John Eckenroad. We like Sara Faust.
But we have questions about the purpose and the future of the Oak Park Development Corp. OPDC is the private-public partnership which Replogle helped establish 35 years ago, which Eckenroad has led for many years, the mantle of which is about to fall to Faust, the long-time second-in-command.
At its founding in 1974, OPDC was as vital an arrow in Oak Park’s quiver as any resource brought to the task of racial integration. The constant partner of white flight in every instance of rapid racial change is economic abandonment, redlining. Oak Park’s visionary leaders of the late 1960s knew that as surely as the Housing Center was essential to building white demand for housing, an economic engine was needed to fund investments in housing and commercial enterprises. That was the impetus for OPDC.
A primary role for OPDC then was to link the interests and the resources of Oak Park’s financial institutions and to harness their lending in the cause of economic redevelopment. It is still a vital role today, though changed as local ownership or control of financial institutions has diminished.
Beyond that though, the purpose of OPDC gets thinner. Is it to recruit new businesses to Oak Park? Retain existing businesses? Coach entrepreneurs through hard times with better business tools? Then there is some vague charge that OPDC has a particular role in maintaining the so-called “Gateways” along Austin Boulevard.
Why this is so confused is a long and uninteresting tale of turf protection between village hall and OPDC, unfocused direction by a succession of village boards, and a lack of clear direction within the organization itself.
Now with funding from village hall tightening, the well-liked Eckenroad heading toward a spring retirement, it is past time for a candid discussion of OPDC’s essential purpose and a plan to define and accomplish that purpose.
Library gets its back up
We’d agree with Oak Park Village Trustee Ray Johnson’s reading of a recent letter from the library board president to the village board. If it were a headline, it would mimic the old New York tabloid style: “Library to Village: DROP DEAD.”
The letter sought to put a clear end to any further talk of whether the library owes the village some $85,000 to cover the village’s 2007 costs in operating the teeny-tiny parking garage beneath the main library.
That this issue was still on anyone’s agenda reflects only how screwed up the village’s accounting, management and contractual grasp on parking facilities had become under previous management at village hall.
After the village basically abandoned any call on the library facility last year, it is not a surprise that the library issued a snotty letter. Probably made the library folk feel somewhat better.
Here’s a real issue though: The library board did and the village board is contemplating taking this mess into executive session for private debate. Such actions are both illegal and ill-advised under our reading of the Open Meetings Act. Considering how poorly executed village agreements on garages have turned out with both the library and the high school, any future discussions need as much sunshine as possible.